Last week, the New York Times released the first poll to measure the make up of the Tea Party movement. The results were surprising to say the least. Granted, we all knew that the Tea Party was majority white, old, and middle American. We also knew that they were ... let's say racially insensitive, which could be ascertained by observing their protests signs ("go back to Kenya"? Nice).

Who would have thought that, on the whole, the Teabaggers were wealthier than the general public? Or better educated? Or that they have weathered the financial crisis better than most Americans? The poll has essentially revealed that the Tea Party isn't bunch of unemployed rednecks angry at Wall Street elites taking money from average Americans. Rather, they're a bunch of retired, wealthy, well educated white Americans whose biggest concern is that Obama is doing too much to help poor people.

This new profile sheds light on the Tea Party's vision of America. They have been revealed as a regressive, backwards thinking group whose vision of America is not compatible with the diverse America of the future.

Firstly, we have to take a serious look at what the Tea Party professes to believe. For the last thirteen months, they've been taking Obama to task about taxes and the deficit. They're in the traditional (and idiotic) conservative mold of "low taxes, small government". Their recent protests fell on tax day, when they protested supposedly skyrocketing taxes and urged government to get out of their lives. However, when you look at the facts, their complaints don't hold up. Obama has not increased taxes on any demographic during his time in office. In fact, he has cut taxes for ninety-five percent of all Americans. We can definitely argue over the effectiveness of his cuts in stimulating the economy, but there can be no doubt that he has cut taxes for most Americans. Any claim otherwise is an act of willful ignorance.

In addition, the NY Times poll reveals that Teabaggers do not pay more taxes than the general public. These people aren't being taxed to death - it's all in their heads. Finally, we have to take into account that the Teabaggers only hate paying taxes when their money goes to programs that don't benefit them. They cry and moan about welfare and healthcare reform for poor people, but when it comes to Social Security and Medicare, they become defenders of big government, despite the fact that those programs consume the most domestic spending. As one NY Times interviewee said,  "I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security. I didn't look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I've changed my mind." So, these people want smaller government for poor people. They want a government that works for them - upper middle class white Americans - not for minorities and the working poor. In summary, they are selfish and short-sighted.

So, if the tax issue is ultimately a straw man and the product of willful ignorance, what is the Tea Party really angry about? The answer lies in a relatively minor aspect of the NY Times poll and a common refrain at Tea Party rallies: "We want our country back!"

Let's look at the poll detail first, which has to do with race. Teabaggers are fourteen percentage points more likely to believe that Obama favors blacks over whites, and are also more likely to think that "too much has been made of the problems facing black people". It is unfortunate that the poll did not ask more questions about race issues, because these details only give us a peek into how this group thinks on race in America. But we can glean much information from the fact that the Teabagger frequently hoist racially insensitive signs at their rallies, depicting Obama as an African witch doctor, a pimp, a slave, an Arab-Muslim terrorist (by the way, a substantial portion of the interviewees believe Obama is a foreigner and that he's a secret Muslim), a baby daddy, and offensive images. It is also important to realize that the vehemence of this movement only sprung up when a black man was elected president, and their anger is only rivaled by the anger of anti-black rights protesters during the civil rights era. Teabaggers mirrored the white furor over integration and black voting rights last month when they called several black lawmakers niggers and even spit on Congressman John Lewis, a hero of the civil rights movement. Let's put two and two together here - these people have proved to be racially insensitive, if not outright racist, and this poll provides further evidence that they are prejudiced against blacks and highly attuned to any perceived advantages blacks might receive due to Obama's presidency.

Which leads us to the standard refrain "We want our country back!" These people pine for some unspecified "old America", and they want to return to "the old days". Who do they want their country back from, and what kind of America do they want to see?

I will not go so far as to say that the Teabaggers want America back from minorities and the poor, who they perceive to be running the show now. However, it is clear that they think America is going in the wrong direction. They feel that the white, Protestant, middle class America that they grew up with is being swept out from under them, and they don't like it.

You know what? They're right. Right now, America is going through a transition. We are becoming more diverse, and our political establishment is slowly but surely reflecting that. With Obama's victory and his subsequent nomination of Sotomayor to the Supreme Court (which also drew the venomous ire of the Teabaggers), it is clear that our country is gradually moving away from its white-dominated past. Minorities are finally arriving on the political scene, and what we see now is a struggle for the future of our nation. The Teabaggers cannot countenance the idea of living in an America where the values and interests of the white American middle and wealthy classes are not the rule of the day. Will minorities and the working poor seize the upper hand and fight for more political power, or will the Tea Party's reactionary anger halt progress in its tracks?

One thing is clear - the America that the Teabaggers want to go back to is not compatible with the future. Blacks will not go back to a past when their political voices were silent and they lived as subhumans. Latinos will not go back to a time when they had no political and economic influence. I'm confident that if Obama fights for his agenda and acts in accordance with his ideals, the working poor will not go back to a time when their wages were suppressed, they bore the brunt of economic hardship, and the wealthy got massive tax cuts while everyone else struggled. Americans will not return to a past where healthcare was a privilege instead of a right, or when banks and corporations sat on their thrones as the new aristocracy. There is no going back to the Tea Party's America.